“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t–you’re right.” – Henry Ford

This quote pretty much sums up my past week, or really, my past few weeks. There are two major fitness related topics I’ve been struggling with lately. The first is getting up in the morning and the second is consistency/frequency. These are both things that I’ve conquered in the past, so I keep telling myself “I know I can do this.” Unfortunately I’ve realized that despite telling myself that (and beating myself up over it) I don’t really believe it in the moment.

I realized this morning as I hit my snooze button for the fourth time that I was telling myself “I just can’t.” I’ve also been telling anyone who will listen about how odd it is that after over a year of early morning work outs, all of a sudden “I just can’t anymore.” Well I guess the problem isn’t that I can’t, because obviously I am capable, the problem is that I believe that I can’t.

And I believe I can’t because in reality, I just really don’t want to.

On Saturday I ran an awesome 10k. I hadn’t been on a real run in weeks and in fact I had been struggling just to exercise in general, let alone train. To my complete surprise, I showed up on race day and ran almost a minute faster than my previous 10k. To put this all into perspective, you have to understand that I had been training hard when I ran my last 10k, went in for a PR attempt, and failed miserably. This time, I showed up after not running for weeks and walked pretty much whenever I felt like it, feeling fantastic the entire time. In fact, this was the first race all year that I had been able to kick through the finish instead of hobble along trying not to puke.

I’m not 100% sure what exactly I’m taking away from this, but I think that the important thing is that a shift is happening in my thinking. Rest time is over, I’m going for a run.